How to recognize false arguments and not get hooked

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-13 00:26

An excerpt from Tom Chatfield's Critical Thinking, which teaches you to analyze, doubt and form your own opinion.

What is an argument

Why is it important to be able to think logically? Before answering this question, let's deal with another concept - a statement. For example, here is a statement regarding the practice of keeping animals as pets:

Keeping animals at home is wrong.

A statement is a statement of a fact or belief that is not supported by justification or evidence. By itself, it is nothing more than transmitted information. On the contrary, an argument is something more valuable.

Consider the following arguments against keeping pets:

Animals should not be turned into pets, as this deprives them of their freedom and the opportunity to lead a dignified life. All living beings are worthy of freedom.

This time we have before us not only a statement about what the speaker sees the situation, but also a logical chain designed to substantiate it. Trying to provide a rationale for the conclusion is very important.

When someone claims that “keeping animals at home is wrong,” we have nowhere to know why he thinks so. Perhaps he has such a compelling reason for this that our life will change as soon as we hear it. Or is he just repeating the words of his mother? We do not know. As soon as this person begins to argue his position, very interesting opportunities open up before us. We can:

• better understand his view of the situation;
• to realize whether we agree with his logic or not;
• compare arguments and see if there are more compelling ones to support the other point of view;
• find out if the speaker is missing important data or ideas;
• argue with him and try to convince him - or change your own point of view.

By making arguments, other people encourage you to agree with a particular inference and, to that end, demonstrate a sequence of assumptions that (in their opinion) support it. Hence a working definition of an argument in the context of critical thinking follows.

An argument is an attempt to convince the truth of an inference through logic.

Two key elements can be distinguished:

• you are offered a logical chain that …
• … is designed to make you accept a conclusion.

The conclusion is the result of the argumentation, the finish to which everything else led. Inference from one argument can be the starting point for another, but there can be only one final conclusion from each separate argument. […]

What are false arguments

See how the false argument works. Have you noticed what is wrong here?

Everyone I spoke to believes that the president is doing an excellent job of his duties. Stop grumbling, it's time to admit that this is a perfectly suitable leader for our country!

Even if you instinctively feel that this line of reasoning is not all right, it is difficult to detect the defect because it is implicit. There is an unspoken premise here, and the catch lies in it - in what has not been said or acknowledged openly. If you write in this premise, the problem becomes obvious.

Everyone I spoke to believes that the president is doing an excellent job of his duties. The collective opinion of the people I interviewed is enough to prove the truth. Stop grumbling, it's time to admit that this is a perfectly suitable leader for our country!

Note that the unspoken premise - that the majority opinion is sufficient to make it true - is general, not particular. This kind of false argument is called appeal to popularity … Once we have discovered it, it becomes obvious that this is not a sufficient basis for a conclusion (unless it is proved that the speaker has carefully interviewed a huge number of different people and their collective opinion really testifies to the competence of the president). Compare this logical fallacy to another false approach to the same question.

Both people I spoke to think that the president is doing an excellent job of his duties. I've talked to Bert and Ernie, and they are never wrong. Stop grumbling, it's time to admit that this is a perfectly suitable leader for our country!

In this case, reliance on the supposedly infallible opinion of two people generates appeal to alleged authority … If the people referred to are not experts in the field, then the reasoning is very weak. If Bert and Ernie are prominent political analysts at the national level, their opinions give reason to agree with the conclusion. Otherwise, we have before us an argument that claims to be certain in the question, in which only a weak rationale is possible, for example:

Both people I spoke with believe that the president is doing an excellent job of his duties. This is Bert and Ernie, and they are well informed. It can be assumed that they are somewhat right; therefore, you have reason to at least partially reconsider your attitude.

This is no longer a false argument, since it does not present a subjective opinion weakly supported by logical arguments as an absolute truth. However, it is the illusion of indisputability that lends credibility to the erroneous logic. In many false conclusions, a weak inductive argument is passed off as a weighty deductive argument, which, in turn, allows you to simplify the picture of the world, to your own reassurance.

Any false inference relies on a detectable baseless underlying premise … This is either a generalization that claims to be a convincing confirmation of a conclusion (at best, barely supported), or a consequence of a misunderstanding of deductive logic. Consider two common false arguments, and try to uncover a baseless underlying premise in each one.

1. The opposition leader claims that morality in our country is falling, when suddenly this moralist is caught having an affair with a man 20 years younger than her. So all her statements are worthless!
2. During the experiment, we observed that an increase in the temperature in the first room led to a decrease in the performance of participants in group No. 1. On this basis, we argue that the decrease in the performance of participants in group No. 2 during the experiment must have been caused by an increase in temperature in the second room.

The first example introduces the premise: "If someone does an act that runs counter to his statements, then these statements are wrong." This is clearly not the case. Hypocrisy is a reason to think about a person's personality, but the presence of this trait does not make everything that he says controversial.

The premise from the second example: "Since the increase in temperature in one case worsened the results, it is the only possible explanation for the deterioration in the results in all other cases." This is not true, as performance can decline for a variety of other reasons: a false premise indicates a misunderstanding of logic.

It can be difficult to point out a specific error in a chain of reasoning or convince others that there is a problem with logic. Effectively clarifying the situation allows method of comparable examples- construction of parallel arguments using exactly the same logic, but in reasoning on a completely different topic.

Let's go back to the first example of this chapter, appealing to popular opinion.

Everyone I spoke to believes that the president is doing an excellent job of his duties. Stop grumbling, it's time to admit that this is a perfectly suitable leader for our country!

You can check the validity of this reasoning on a comparable example - not even one, but three.

1. It's 1066, and everyone I talked to thinks the Earth is flat. Stop grumbling, it's time to admit it's true!
2. None of those with whom I have spoken knows what the "art of Terpsichore" is. Stop being clever, it's time to admit that this is a meaningless phrase!
3. Everyone in this room claims that two plus two equals five. Enough of arguing, the way it is!

As you certainly know, two plus two equals four, the Earth is not flat, and Terpsichore's art is dance. In this case, examples that have exactly the same form as the analyzed argument reveal the groundlessness of its fundamental premise, helping to see the inconsistency of seemingly convincing reasoning.

To become more familiar with other thinking tools and learn how to distinguish false reasoning, read the book "Critical Thinking."